2K Games just fired a rocket of scalding-hot news through the RPS postbox. After waiting for it to cool, we read that a fourth piece of Borderlands DLC, Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution, will be released this September, granting players 20+ new missions, 10 extra skill points and 3 more backpack slots. Exciting! Or is it? I’m not sure. I lost interest in Borderlands after the first six hours or so. Additional screenshots and the full announcement after the jump.

Ominous horde of robots! Interesting!

The offspring a ninja and a single, enormous hand! Less interesting!

Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution invites single-player and co-op fans back to try to suppress a deadly Claptrap revolution using one of four infamous vault hunters. The foursome find themselves caught in the crosshairs of a deadly civil war between the Hyperion Corporation’s well-armed armadas and the ever-amassing army of homicidal Claptraps led by one of the most eagerly awaited characters in the franchise’s history – the cunning Ninja Assassin. As vault hunters, players must put aside their past differences with the Hyperion Corporation, namely the organization’s repeated attempts to wipe them from existence. For a hefty payday, they will join forces to help beat down the mechanical uprising and thwart the dastardly kung-fu expert, the Claptrap known only as Ninja Assassin.

“A year ago Borderlands was an untested brand that through hard work and a lot of passion, turned out to be one of the best-selling, claptastic and skagtacular games we have ever created,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “A year later, we are releasing our fourth DLC installment, Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution, which illustrates our enthusiasm for creating highly entertaining content that enhances a franchise. In addition to serving as the perfect bookend to the original game, what gamer doesn’t love a kung-fu-wielding Ninja Assassin Claptrap with nunchuck skills?”

Like its add-on predecessors, Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution offers extensive co-op integration that seamlessly melds single and multiplayer experiences, and incorporates the most explosive role-playing shooter fun imaginable. Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution will provide more than 20 new missions to loot and tons of fresh enemies to blast through, including original boss battles, waves of homicidal Claptraps, well-armed Hyperion soldiers, and local creatures that have been Claptrap-ified – including crab-traps, rakk-traps and skag-trapps. Fans can earn an additional 10 skill points for a total of 71 available skill tree points, and three more backpack slots for additional blood-yielding weapons and many hours of enjoyment.

that problem with single-spawn DLC disgusted me when I found out i will need to do the knoxx armory more times(and I even used 2 trainers so I could expose the glitch by using 2 saved teleport positions when I was there)

The single player was pretty thankless, especially with the crappy ending. But co-op is something else, because it amps up the number of enemies to an absurd level. With four of you every fight is a ludicrous maelstrom of high level beasties.

Unfortunately Borderlands got about 5 minutes of my time in singleplayer, and when trying to play with a friend Gearbox decided they’d go back to the stone age of multiplayer with gamespy, so it turned into a waste of £20.

I can’t honestly get excited about DLC for what in my eyes is an awful game. It just sounds like bolt on horrible.

Like they say, it’s quite fun in multiplayer, especially if you’re with a good group and enjoy it as co-op, or work out tactics before walking into a large valley of “Oh crap, the skags are raping us.”

I played through it in single player and had a good time though, since I completely ignored any semblance of tactics, or wisdom, equipped an Exploding Artifact on Brick, and punched everything to oblivion. Brick being the only character thats half fun solo. Would of been so much better had they kept a realistic-esque art style and made a weapon crafting system to go along with their insane amount of weapons.

I recently played the game again in co-op, start to finish (and then some Playthrough 2), including the DLCs. It still holds up – it’s a great time when you have a team of 3 or 4 players.

I’m not sure about the lag complaints, but it’s probably a connection problem rather than a game issue. Co-op always played well for me even on home connections 800 miles away. The big problem with the game in the past was the ridiculous difficulty of setting up a co-op server; the actual network architecture was, to put it politely, f*cked. But Gearbox patched that and it works about 30000% better, meaning that it now functions properly about 90% of the time.

No, Hellgate: London was Diablo with Guns (and actually quite good after a fuckton of patches). Borderlands is a thoroughly monotone FPS with the most ridiculously bullet-spongey enemies ever, worse than Gears of War, and a billion identical weapons with just minor stat variations between them.

Co-op is only useful if you know the folks who are looting everything you’ve shot, or you’re uberly fast as looting…otherwise, you run out of ammo in about a minute, as I did. Every time I played.
Totally agree with you though, I got bored of single player after half an hour, tried co-op, after 5 minutes of attempting to loot things, yet still having my starting guns and no ammo, I gave up. Hardly any point in playing is some window licker is being a lootwhore :(

why does everyone on this site hate this game so much?
out of all the crap that came out in the past couple years, it was one of the most interesting and fun titles. Sure, a little repetitive, but no worse than most more typical FPS counterparts. The fantastic writing and humor alone makes it worth it, let alone all the exploring and “dungeon crawling” type activities.

I actually really enjoy the single-player game. And I’m not typically a particular fan of first-person shooters. (Maybe that’s why?)

Anyway, as far as I know (bearing in mind I’ve not played that much of the DLC, though I’ve finished the main game once, working through Zombie Island now), Hyperion Corporation’s never done me wrong, it was the Atlas Corporation who were murderous idiots.

I’m the same. My steam account reveals an alarming 140 hours played, all of it on single player, and that’s without any DLC. I think it was probably the combination of loot and shooting that did it. The loot being nicely addictive but also more hands on than the diablo alikes, which sooner or later fall prey to the nagging sensation of “But I’m just clicking stuff!”.

I tend not to be a big fan of shooters. It’s not that they’re not fun but they all seem a bit samey, so there needs to be something unique to get me interested.

rockets are the weakest, slowest and least reload-friendly of all borderlands guns. You could never find anything faster than 4x high damage smg with good accuracy, clip size and reload speed bonus. AFter I got it I was so fed up with launchers I actually sold all including those from bank.

Indeed, I don’t recall Hyperion ever doing anything to me other than providing awesome weapons (albeit, often awesome weapons that had to be prised from the cold, dead, hands of enemies). Well, unless that guardian angel woman was actually a bizzarely complex and flawed attempt to get me killed.

And yeah, the game is OK single player, but nothing special. Comes into its own coop, not just because of amping up the enemies, but because you really can work in support quite cleverly.

I’m just curious, but did the expansions or addons or whatever add a lot of new enemies to fight? I recall the original game being nothing but constant repetition of: kill crazy dudes in masks, kill skags, kill crazy dudes and their midget friends, kill bugs with a side of bigger or more scary skags, and so on. The incredibly repetitious enemies started to wear after a while, no matter how cleverly I could shoot them in the face.

Not really, Zombie Island has a bunch of new ones, but it’s basically isolated.

ZIODN has Zombies, Big hulking zombies, one Frankensteve, a half dozen or so Werewolves, and I think a Vampire or two.

MMUR was just an arena mode where you get to kill everyone repeatedly.

and SAGK has some giant walker things, ninjas, and midgets riding skags. I’m not sure if the mechs were introduced then, or if you had to kill them in the original. Also added a few vehicles that try and kill you. Oh, and I can’t forget Crawmerax the invincible.

Coop was a bit of fun with friends – if only it had been harder.
The first playthrough was so ridiculously easy (balanced for people with controllers, maybe?) that it was really, really fucking boring at times… then we played some of the DLC (of which I only really liked Knoxx, and again, all of them were too easy) and never got to the second playthrough because the first was just so boring and no one wanted to play any more of it.
Should maybe have edited saves to unlock the second right away, or something, but we never though of that then..

Cool! I really enjoyed my singleplayer playthrough of Borderlands. I got the disc-based DLC and thought it was pretty mediocre compared to the main game (especially Moxxie which was the most pointless waste of space i’ve ever paid for).

People say that Secret Army is much better though so i really hope that they release both that and this new one on a disc at retail! Would definitely buy that! :D

I think what gets overlooked a bit with Borderlands is that they got the shooting right. You move at the right speed when running, jumping headshots is doable, the aiming is perfect (none of that ‘realistic’ crap MW tries to sell us) and things go boom when you shoot. It reminded me of the well designed shooters of the past (UT in particular) in how it feels to play. Just all around satisfying basic gameplay.

Had tons of hours fun in couch co-op mode. It’s been a quirky trip of loot, quotes that have worked their way into our daily conversation and a good go-to game for some relaxed fun. Until you reach around level 5 it is a bit of a slow slog, I will agree. I’m stoked about the new DLC, and hope they keep putting out stuff. Gearbox, thank you.

Ah, it must be time to bring out my “They added SecuROM DRM to the Steam version when the DLC came out, which broke it under Linux” rant again. Gearbox mentioned there was a chance they’d remove the DRM, since the third DLC didn’t have it, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

I like it. Gives me the chance to kill and blow a LOT of stuff up. Perhaps you don’t like it because you are more of the “completionist” gamer, or you don’t like single player campaigns of fps’s in general. Can’t really blame the game in that standpoint…

I played one in a game where a dude created a cheat that made hi weapons shot weapons, and the explosion use weapons (not particles). He made soo much crap soo fast, that crashed the server (me). By the time I returned there, nothing, the whole are whas empty (normally everything that drops is there foreven, even if these things drop in a coop game). So I have exprience a *literal* rain and *explosion* of weapons.

There was also the armory, and some people managed to found a gliched wall, to access it withouth timelimit. So was possible to select weapons as long as you want.
And theres this enormeous crab that takes a lot of damage and spawn another billion weapons.

Do you know how I feel?
The Matrix Stockroom feels like *nothing* to me after experiencing Borderlands.

I wasn’t sold on Borderlands until about level 20 I think, then the game seemed to really open up and become a lot more fun. The very start in particular was quite poor as a sniper, when you can’t hit anything and all the creatures are Skaggs that charge you, plus you always run out of ammo. Since 20ish though my co-op game has been ridiculously good fun, easily one of the best co-op experiences I’ve ever tried.

I enjoyed the single-player, at least as far as level 25, when I got distracted (oh look, shiny Starcraft 2). Yes, it’s a bit samey, but in the same way that people get their repetitve fix from Diablo (click on monster, collect loot), I found the combo of crunchy headshots and collecting loot rather satisfying, at least for a while. Bought it on a Steam sale for a tenner so definitely got my money’s worth. Must actually try the multiplayer sometime, but haven’t set up a Gamespy account for it (why didn’t they make it simple and tie it to your Steam ID?)

Were people expecting a different game? It’s about shooting things, and it does that so well. The levels were excellently designed: lots of breadcrumbs and one-way drops to keep the player moving in the right direction, plentiful cover that allowed for multiple approaches, a good mix of claustrophobic spaces and wide open vistas, generous use of vertical space. The weapons sounded solid and seemed powerful thanks to the dazzling particle effects. Then there are the XP and loot incentives to hook you. I didn’t have any of the porting issues some peope seem to be having, the controls felt solid to me. The one quibble I have is having to come back to the mission hubs. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but it seems like if the goal is “kill this dude”, you shouldn’t have to trek back to the job board. Were people expecting an amazing story, or does FPS combat just not do it for some people?

Some friends and I are currently playing through Borderlands again. Jim has it right when he says about the battles; we only have three people and it’s a good laugh with the shooting and the killing ad whatnot.

Problems: the world is very boring, your interaction is limited to opening chests.

Quests involve going to position X and pressing ‘e’ or LMB until the quest is over, at which point you hump back to the board/person/whatever or past an annoying loading point that *could be avoided entirely* to receive your presents of moneys and experience and occasionally guns. You are able to do some quest objectives in any order, for example the ECHO diaries (you just have to pick them up), but the map only shows the “next” one as arbitrarily chosen by Gearbox. No, backtracking really is fun! I don’t mind driving around pointlessly! While yes the world is beautiful in a kind of ruined, slightly disgusting way, I see it often enough without tarting around trying to find the next ‘e’ button.

Driving: Knoxx improves the variety of vehicles on offer, vanilla Borderlands is a bit shit. This is more of a minor complaint but I don’t like hitting the smallest polygon of a world brush only to stop immediately. The car rolling over small obstacles would have been much nicer.

You can’t have the map open and move at the same time.

The entire game interface is completely shit. Who thought of ‘i’ to invite friends? Why is escape the only way to exit some menus? So many bad decisions.

That all said, it sounds like I fucking hate this game. I really don’t, we’re having a blast playing through it. The combination of weapons and powers you can create in your small team leads to hilarity as you destroy all lower-levelled foes. Or, when facing tougher enemies, teaming up to take them down also feels good. It’s just that Borderlands could have been rather a lot more! It speaks of so much potential (as does a certain Mr Pitchford) but often doesn’t achieve it. Dr Ned is good fun I suppose, the quests are slightly more interesting than that.

The DLC is of a fairly high quality (he says not having bought Mad Moxxi’s Riot) but I am slightly annoyed that the DLC has other features like the chest which could be very useful. I’m also annoyed that Gearbox seem determined to stamp out “fun” things like creating your own weapons or making a virtually unlimited backpack. Who the hell plays Borderlands competitively? I’d have no problem with someone messing around to see what gun they could get. Being fair that’s just me and maybe some people don’t like it, but offline play? They’re so not cool.

tl;dr: I’m having a lot of fun and consider it a worthwhile purchase, whenever it was last year.

I probably won’t reinstall just for this DLC, It’s too little, too late. But I enjoyed the single player borderlands, ran great on my crappy PC. My only real complaints is that I wish it was just bigger with more to do. It only takes 45 seconds or so to scoot from one side of the map to the other in a vehicle, then you’re screen loading into a new area.

Loved it, skipped the Moxxie DLC, loved the General Knox DLC, had outleveled Dr Ned by the time I caught it on sale, so haven’t messed with it. Awesome firefight chaos with 3 people (never got 4) I’m sure I have something like 240 hours logged on it.

I enjoyed the main Borderlands game, but it has some niggling issues. I’ve not played the first two DLCs because they have icky awful activation-limit SecuROM, but Knoxx shows that Gearbox are getting a lot better at bringing the awesome. Just that teeny tiny problem of having only one wildly out-of-the-way spawn so that you wind up retreading a lot of content repeatedly just to get to the new stuff. If they can fix that for this DLC, I’m excited.

“The Catch-a-Ride up by Fyrestone is more busted than my momma’s girl parts. Why don’t you take a poke at it? The uh, system, not my mom. Hot dog down a Skag den, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Lucky’s an old buddy of mine – and by old buddy I mean asshole that ruined my momma’s girl parts. Sounds like he’s in trouble so you go on ahead and try and keep him alive long enough so I can kill him at a later occasion.”

“Thanks for keepin’ that dickbag alive long enough for me to pound on later. Much as it pains me to admit, Lucky knows the area better than anyone. Might wanna use him whilst he’s alive for me not having killed him and all.”

oh god, I kind of liked this game but I bought and hardly played the last DLC. I’m pretty sure most people moved on. Still, the number 1 complaint I heard from other players was that you couldn’t kill the claptrap robots…